community
of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory,
which ma kes clea r that not long after
horrific events we paper over the raw-
ness with storytelling that ma kes a tidy
package of what was, in truth, a chaotic
mess. Our national myths demand it.
I was deeply saddened by what I read,
by what I saw.
Now, when I looked on these fields, I
saw something that the boy who played
war had not seen. I saw death, occurring
repeatedly, brutally, and in la rge num-
bers. And not by accident or calamity, but
systematically, by desig n. If you know
what you’re looking at, as you gaze upon
this well-preser ved open-air museum
and linger there, you can see the 8,000
dead a nd the 4,000 horses rotting along-
side them in the midsummer heat. You
ca n understand why Abraham Lincoln
was so sad and so mortally exhausted
by this war that he would say, “Nothing
touches the tired spot.”
When Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg
four months after the battle, the area
was still devastated, a horror show of
makeshift graves, dug up from time to
time by marauding hogs. The town re-
mained enveloped in the stench of war.
It was not a scene that inclined one to
think of glory or heroism. And Lincoln
did not dwell there in his little three-
minute speech. He went deeper. He re-
defined the country’s past, implying that
the phrase “all men are created equal”
must now include all. And he offered an
agenda for the future:
“...It is for us the living, rather, to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here have thus
far so nobly advanced. It is rather for
us to be here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us—that from
these honored dead we take increased
devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devo-
tion—that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died
in vain—that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom...”
As Yale history professor David Blight
has written, Lincoln called out to the liv-
ing, proclaiming that they were (and we
are) “compelled to remember, and from
the stuff of memory, create a new nation
from the wreckage of the old.”
It’s worth contemplating on the 150th
anniversary of the Gettysburg Address
what unfinished work we still have to do,
not just America ns but everybody seek-
ing to find some peace and unity in the
wreckage of a divided, chaotic world.
It is worth remembering the spirit of
those 270 words: that we are equal
despite our many differences, and if we
cannot resolve those differences except
through violent means, we may not long
endure. We ca nnot let our differences
make us forget our fundamental equality,
that which unites us all. Can real contem-
plation of the facts of a place like Gettys-
burg streng then our resolve to continue
this unfinished work?
On my visits to Gettysburg over the
yea rs, I’ve encountered many people
from ma ny different places. Under the
torch of the eternal peace light memo-
rial—inscription: Peace Eternal in a Na-
tion United—a nine-yea r-old girl tugs at
her father’s sleeve and asks, “How do you
know who wins or loses?” Tour groups
in multicolored commemorative T-shirts
pour off buses bored and sweaty, dazed,
unsure what you’re supposed to do for
amusement at a battlefield. A middle
school history teacher f rom Hawaii re-
marks on how much less abstract the war
is when you visit the battlefield up close,
and “how sad it must have been for these
boys to fight and die so far from home,
how lonely.” A college professor f rom
Maryland muses that the young people
he teaches are the same age as the thou-
sands who were mowed down in the field
before him. A high school teacher f rom
Massachusetts notes that we “see the
thing as a whole now; those young men
only saw their little piece of it.” After lis-
tening to an historian describe Pickett’s
Charge in detail, an older man pauses,
turns away, takes off his Ray-Bans, and
wipes his eyes. A black bus driver from
Richmond, Virginia, tells me that this is
where civil rights in America were born
and “the fact that we are one nation in-
stead of just many states was established
here. Lincoln knew that was the rewa rd,
but he also knew the terrible price that
had been paid. You go to Disney World
to be entertained. You come to Gettys-
burg to learn, to stand here and gather a
sense of what this nation is.”
Visit Gettysburg. If you have children,
take them. Don’t breeze through. Stay
awhile. Camp there. Don’t be pulled
away by the cheesy commercial distrac-
tions of ghost tours and wax museums.
Hire one of the guides to give you a tour
and show you what tra nspired. You will
be shocked and moved. By all means, let
your children appreciate the bravery of
those who fought there—it was monu-
mental. But don’t let this lesson be lost:
we will inevitably dispute—and deep-
ly—with each other, but the results are
catastrophic when we ignore how inter-
connected we are and leave ourselves no
means other than agg ression to navigate
our differences.
Aggression can start small, but it
escalates. Gettysburg is a still portrait
of what that escalation can lead to.
These are lessons not for American
history class alone. Forgetting the toll
aggression takes is so much easier than
remembering it. It’s easier to justify
fighting as the solution to our inevitable
opposing interests and viewpoints. The
ultimate reason to remember Gettysburg
is not so much to replay the exploits of
the victors and the vanquished. It is to
remember, to mourn, how much is lost
when we, each of us, choose to fight to
the death. ●
Forgetting the toll
aggression takes is
so much easier than
remembering it.
Aggression can start
small, but it escalates.
Gettysburg is a still
portrait of what that
escalation can lead to.
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